Small School, Smart Schools: Distance Education in Remoteness Conditions

Abstract

Mountain, insular and internal areas represent 70 percent of the Italian land with a population that experiences many difficulties in daily living due to territorial constraints. Nevertheless, it is extremely important to guarantee equal opportunities and services to those who live on the mountains and small islands of the country. Distance lessons could be an opportunity to overcome isolation and offer equal and quality teaching activities within curriculum. Remoteness and Distance education will be part of the curriculum of the small rural schools to offer to the students the opportunity to have equal and quality education as the “standard” schools. In this chapter we will describe two teaching methods which provide education through technological settings and project-based learning to foster soft skills in the students with the aim of learning disciplinary competences: (i) The Extended Learning Environment, where two or more classrooms work together on a common school subject project using different kind of technological setting. (ii) The Shared lesson, based on every day distance learning activities. Two classrooms (with students of different levels) of different schools define a smart setting with video-conferencing system and knowledge forum on a daily basis sharing the same lesson in the same time of school.